Art dialogue methods: phronèsis and its potential for restoring an embodied moral authority in local communities

ABSTRACT

We put forward Art-Dialogue-Methods (ADM) as an inquiry for practical wisdom within communities. It draws from a series of methodological traditions like artistic inquiry, participatory action research and narrative research. The practice of ADM could facilitate healing processes in fractured communities and organisations in today’s world. ADM avoids a search from grand overarching solutions, but searches for outcomes as exemplars of the good life. We may find the relevance of this quest in the postmodern macro-context of the globalised world today with tendencies of individualization and neo-liberal markets. The authors explore the potential value of ADM for the development of practical wisdom within communities, by pointing out arguments in philosophical and sociological literature and by means of exemplary cases of ADM-programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based-method
• art-dialogue-method
• phronèsis
• community building
• modernity

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Victor Dobbin, CB MBE PhD DD, for his valuable suggestions on content and his editing of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Heidi S.C.A. Muijen (1959) studied philosophy and art therapy. Her academic career was in the Netherlands at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University Maastricht and the Free University of Amsterdam. Her Ph.D. is about the use of metaphor in communication and dialogical processes of change. Since 2003 she is owner of a centre for philosophical counselling and creativity and developed the Art Dialogue Method and philosophical dynamic games on the art of living. As a guest lecturer, she is involved in several universities of applied sciences.

René Brohm is the owner of a research bureau and partner in an academic publishing company. He is associated to several universities, for supervising research and PhD theses. His publications, including his PhD thesis, focus on the emancipation and reflection of knowledge workers.